


'Verse War Z Day 4: Unknowing

by Lyrstzha



Series: 'Verse War Z Project [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: 'verse war z project, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Dark, Flash Fic, Gen, Major character death - Freeform, Zombies, potential Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-14
Updated: 2011-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-20 09:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrstzha/pseuds/Lyrstzha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raising Buffy could have gone so, so much worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Verse War Z Day 4: Unknowing

It’s like waking up, a little, except _into_ a nightmare instead of _from_ one. All of a sudden there’s a road in the darkness and a steering wheel under his hands, and nothing of what must have come before that.

 _What the hell?_ Xander thinks to himself. _Right, crisis mode. Figure out what’s happened and kick its ass. I can do that._

“Please, please, oh god it _hurts_ , please…,” Dawn whines between gritted teeth, and when he glances over his shoulder Xander can see the tight clench of her eyelids in the brief orange strobe of a streetlight as they pass beneath it. He pulls his gaze back to the road in front of him, frowning. _Dawn, yes, something’s wrong with Dawn. That’s why we have to get to…some place. But why is something wrong with Dawn? What happened?_

“Shh, honey. I’ve got you,” Tara soothes, both arms around Dawn and rocking slightly. Her eyes flick up to meet Xander’s in the rearview mirror. “Drive faster,” she says quietly, very softly but with so much more command than he’s used to from her.

“Where were we—” Xander starts to ask in confusion, but Dawn cries out sharply and curls even further in on herself, Tara moving with her.

“The hospital,” Tara says, and that makes sense. Of course that’s where they’re taking Dawn. No wonder he’s headed east on Torrance, and he really ought to have made that last left; he’ll have to circle around now.

“Faster,” Tara repeats, and Xander’s foot obediently presses the accelerator down harder until the car almost flies off the road on curves. He hopes that Sunnydale residents have learned by this time to stay off the streets at night, because he’s pretty sure he couldn’t stop in time for anything.

“What’s wrong?” Xander asks when Dawn gives another smothered cry, high and soft like a small, trapped animal.

Tara’s head lifts, and in the mirror her eyes glint back at him in wells of shadow. “You don’t remember?” she asks cryptically, her hand all the time rubbing comforting circles on Dawn’s back.

Xander blinks and tries to concentrate. “No, I—weren’t we trying to, you know…” and he trails off before he says _raise Buffy_ , because that’s a secret Dawn shouldn’t hear.

“Yes,” Tara agrees to what he hasn’t said, her voice catching a little on the slide of the ‘y’.

“But then what happened? Why is Dawn here? And where’s Willow and Anya? Why aren’t they…?” But there’s no end to that thought. It crashes and burns and sets his hands on the wheel to shaking, even though he doesn’t know why.

Tara doesn’t say anything except soft nonsense sounds to Dawn.

“ _Tara_ ,” Xander says more sharply than he means to, almost accusing. “Willow and Anya. What happened to them?” He glances over his shoulder, but Tara’s head is bent and she doesn’t meet his eyes.

“Tara,” he says again, louder, when she doesn’t answer, because he isn’t a coward and he needs to know, even though a gutting stab of fear strikes low in his belly, even though Tara visibly flinches when he calls her name.

“G-gone,” Tara stammers shortly. Dawn keens again at that, and Tara hushes her. “The spell, it wasn’t—Willow didn’t tell me—I should have asked her about the blood,” Tara babbles in a muddled rush, as if some dam has broken. “I should have asked.”

“What?” Xander demands, no less confused than before. “What about blood?”

“Blood magic is clean, if it’s your own blood. But it wasn’t hers. I knew it wasn’t, but I didn’t want to know. I didn’t _ask_ her, and I didn’t _stop_ her, and it wasn’t—”

“Wait,” Xander cuts her off before she can get any further. “Are you saying Wills is using the dark side of the force? Because she wouldn’t do that. You should know she wouldn’t.”

“B-b-but she _did_ ,” Tara argues in a broken voice, soft and stuttering but stubbornly resolute. “And it poisoned the magic.”

“Wait, what? How? Did we—Buffy?”

Dawn lets out a gasping sob. “Buffy,” she chokes out in a thick, raw voice. “Please, Buffy, _no_.”

For a moment, there is only the sound of Dawn’s sobbing and the rush of blood in Xander’s ears.

“Tara,” Xander whispers, more sure than he’s ever been in his life that he doesn’t want the answer to the question he has to ask, but he’s still not a coward. “What did we _do_?”

“You saw,” Tara murmurs. “You saw her first.”

If she says anything else, it’s lost in the thunder of blood in Xander’s head. Yes, he saw Buffy first. A ragged hand clawed up through the earth, a familiar enough sight after being a Scooby so long, until his brain caught up and reminded him that it was _Buffy’s_ grave.

“Buffy!” he shouted, half bright relief and half sudden horror that they’d neglected to dig her out before doing the spell to bring her back. He grabbed at that hand, but Willow had caught it first.

“Buffy, Buffy, it’s okay, we’re here, we’ll get you right out, Goddess, I’m so sorry,” Willow babbled, clutching that hand in one of her own and pushing at the soil around it with her other one. “Buffy, it’s—” and Willow broke off with a gasp of surprise and pain. She yanked back on her hand. “Buffy, you’re _hurting_ me. Stop, I can’t—” She kept pulling at that clasp on her hand, pitting her weight against it, but it would not release her. Xander remembered seeing the trickle of blood where grave-ragged fingernails dug crescents into Willow’s palm. He was reaching for Willow, though he’s not sure what he might have meant to do, when she cried out in pain and disbelief as that hand crushed down on hers with an awful grating whisper of grinding bones.

Anya’s foot flashed into view as she kicked at Buffy’s wrist to no effect, and Tara chanted a quick mutter of something Xander couldn’t understand, but then there was a spark of light and Willow was scrabbling back from the graveside.

“We need to _go_. I know impending karmic retribution when I smell it,” Anya bit out, scrambling to her feet and grabbing at Xander’s shoulder to pull him up with her.

Xander turned, reaching down for Willow where Tara was already helping her up. Willow was cradling her crushed, bleeding hand, and there were tears running down her face, Xander remembers vividly, which of course is wrong. _Willow should never cry_ , he thinks, a tenet of faith he’s held for years. _The world can’t be right if Willow is crying_. And Buffy was still buried, and they couldn’t just _leave_ her, of course they couldn’t.

But then the earth before them burst like a ruptured cyst, dirt and rock flying, blinding him. There was a scream, and when he blinked the grit from his eyes, Xander saw—

Xander’s mind stutters there like a broken reel of film, images catching and flickering. Willow, her arms raised, a spell on her lips. Blood, so much blood, soaking into his shirt and covering his hands as Anya and Tara dragged him into dark woods. Flashes of the dark bulk of trees blotting out starlight as they ran, stumbling, and then empty streets. The house on Revello suddenly, with no clear idea how they’d gotten there, but the door already hanging splintered and askew in its frame, like a broken-toothed mouth. Spike, standing with Dawn pushed behind him, both of them bleeding, and two half-moons of toothmarks bitten into Dawn’s skinny, bare arm.

“What did you _do_?” Spike demanded, fierce and grim, game face on and yellow eyes blazing. “What did you bloody fools _do_?”

After that his own hands, white-knuckled over Anya’s throat, blood flowing too fast between his fingers and a terrible rattle buzzing beneath his palms; he was yelling something then, something desperate, but it could have been anything. Then he was carrying Dawn and running, pushing her into the back of a car. Then Spike again, his back to them, standing between them and something Xander couldn’t see.

“Even wrong, even like this. Always,” Spike said. “Take the Bit and _go_ ,” he hissed over his shoulder at Xander, never looking entirely away from…from…

From Buffy, _that_ was it. From Willow and Anya and Buffy, and they were okay, they were all okay, and they were walking towards the car, and it was all going to be all right after all, just the way it should be.

Except Tara was yelling something and pulling desperately at him, and there was the ivory flash of bone at Anya’s neck, and Willow, her jaw shouldn’t hang like that, shouldn’t open so wide, what—

Xander’s mind goes blank and dark and still.

It’s like waking up, a little, except _into_ a nightmare instead of _from_ one. All of a sudden there’s a road in the darkness and a steering wheel under his hands, and nothing of what must have come before that.

 _What the hell?_ Xander thinks to himself. _Right, crisis mode. Figure out what’s happened and kick its ass. I can do that._


End file.
